Justification for investing in College Admissions Counseling
Parents with children in high school are either thinking about college admissions, starting the college application process or are in the middle of the college application process. Wherever a student is in the college admissions process, parents should consider investing in college admissions counseling.
The co-founders of UCEazy, Vinnie Gupta and Vaitheesh Kolady (VK), started UCEazy to help students whose parents were born outside the U.S. receive quality college admissions guidance. Vinnie and VK are both immigrant parents, who felt it necessary to invest in college admissions counseling for their children when they were applying to colleges. Even though this was not previously budgeted, they both agree that it was worth the time and money invested.
Below are several financial reasons why parents, who were born outside the U.S., should invest in college admissions counseling for their children.
- Realistic College Choices – A college admissions counselor guides students to create realistic college lists. Costly application fees are wasted when students apply to colleges they will not likely be accepted to or when they apply to schools that do not align with their goals. Currently, the average college application fee is $100, including fees for the College Board/ACT to transfer SAT or ACT test scores. UCEazy believes that counselors could save families an average of $500.
- In fact, UCEazy was featured in a USA Today article that describes how colleges are increasing their revenue through fees they receive for rejected applications.
- Campus Tours – A counselor can also help students create a strategy for taking campus tours. Again, this can save families money and time from making unnecessary campus visits. The average campus visit costs between $1,000-$2,000 for colleges outside of a student’s local area.
- Testing Strategies – A counselor can help a student with testing strategies that can help a family save on unnecessary retakes of the SAT/ACT tests, which average $50 per test.
- College’s Rising Costs – Before financial aid, most families typically spend between $80,000 – $300,000 for a four-year college education, including the cost of living. In the end, the cost for college admissions counseling only adds a small amount more to the overall cost of a four-year college education.
In addition to the financial savings listed above, there are benefits to the families peace of mind:
- No Regrets – When parents take the time to invest in college admissions counseling, they will never have to wonder if they could have done more to help their child get into the college of their dreams.
- Reduce Family Stress – In addition, having a professional counselor work with your child helps reduce family stress. This can also help with the parent-child relationship.
The following testimonial from a UCEazy client demonstrates the impact of counseling on the parent-child relationship.
“I believe that having UCEazy’s help also helped ensure that my parent-teen relationship was not marred by having contentious college application discussions. The advisor was able to guide the student to better college choices and gently improve the choices over time rather than what would have been challenging conversations between the student and parents, because, of course, the parents don’t know anything about college admissions.”
If you are a parent who was born outside of the U.S. and you are considering hiring a college admissions counselor to assist your child secure entrance into the college of their dreams, UCEazy offers two programs. The first program prepares students for college admissions (grades 8-10) and the second helps students during the college application process (grades 11-12). For more information or to register for a free consultation, please contact us at info@uceazy.com or 1-833-982-3299.